Oleksandr Mykhailenko

Turkmenistan's dictator had billions in gas money. His people got poverty. His statue got gold, and it turned all day to follow the sun. He renamed January after himself and April after his mother. Then he renamed the word for bread after her too. Then he closed every hospital outside the capital. His name was Saparmurat Niyazov. In 2005 a TV crew got into his country, and the video below shows what one man can build when nobody can say no. And nobody could. He made himself president for life, and every year his parliament stood up to cheer him. With that power came the money: gas worth tens of billions of dollars, all of it under his personal control. A watchdog said about $3 billion sat in a German bank. The bank denied it. So he built for himself. A $12 million tower for his gold statue. A marble mosque in his home village with lines from his own book on the walls. That book was the Ruhnama. Children learned it at school. You needed it for a driver's license. Ordinary people got his book, not his money. Before the hospitals closed, he had already fired 15,000 health workers. That lasted until he died in 2006. The man who took over was his health minister, a dentist. The dentist moved the statue that followed the sun out of the center, then put up a gold statue of himself on a horse. The face on the gold changed. Who got the gold didn't. So was Niyazov just one madman with too much money, or does a country this rich in gas always end up with one man at the top?

Robert Kennedy spent years trying to put him in prison. Richard Nixon let him out. Then he vanished from a parking lot without a trace. Jimmy Hoffa was a hero to truck drivers. One word from him could stop 400,000 trucks and leave almost every store shelf in America empty. In the video below, senators ask where his cash came from. His answer is three words. But his real power wasn't the trucks. It was the drivers' money. Every month they paid into a fund for old age. Hoffa decided who got it, and some of them were building casinos in Las Vegas. Kennedy wanted to know why. In 1957 the Senate asked Hoffa about the money in his pocket: $20,000 in cash. "Do you have any record of it?" "No." "Would you tell us where you got the cash?" "I accumulated it." Kennedy didn't believe him. Seven years later, a jury found him guilty of fraud with the drivers' fund. Prison should have been the end. It wasn't. Nixon freed him in 1971 if he stayed out of the union until 1980. Hoffa wouldn't wait. In 1975 a reporter asked if he was a millionaire. "Obviously, obviously." That summer he drove to a meeting outside Detroit. At about 2:15 he called his wife from a pay phone. Nobody had shown up. By morning his car was still in the lot. He never came back. The FBI has dug up a horse farm and land under a bridge. Nothing. The drivers' money made him unstoppable. Most believe it's also what stopped him. So who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear: the mob he worked with, or someone he trusted?

Margaret Thatcher's son gave a mercenary $275,000 to help overthrow an oil-rich African country. Nobody was supposed to know. Two days later, he took him home to meet his mother. The mercenary's name is Simon Mann. He wrote everything down — and in the video below he tells how it all began. The country was Equatorial Guinea. The son, Mark, was paying for a helicopter. Mann says Thatcher heard the whole plan. "Jolly good," she said. "I am sure it's going to work." Then she asked how "our money" would be handled. Through a fake air ambulance, he told her. That Christmas, Mark invited him to breakfast. Thatcher was waiting by the pool, at a table set for two. He thought it was an ambush. "I know what is going on," she told him, "and you SAS chaps need to get a move on, don't you." So he got moving. Mark shook his hand: "I will be there for you, no matter what, Simon." In March 2004 he was arrested in Zimbabwe. His lawyers called Mark and another backer. They were told to ring back "after the Grand Prix was over." Months later Mark pleaded guilty over the helicopter, paid about $505,000 and flew home. Mann got 34 years and was pardoned in 2009. We only have Mann's word for what Thatcher said. Mark's answer: "Simon can say what he wants." One man paid with a fine. The other paid with five years of his life. So did she really say "Jolly good," or is this a man getting even with the friends who left him in a cell?

This man made Kim Jong Un up to $100 million a year. He was a hero. Now they call him "garbage." A car and a color TV. That's what all those millions bought him, and he still stayed loyal for decades. In the video below, he tells CNN what finally made him run. His name is Ri Jong Ho. He spent much of his career in Office 39, the secret unit that raises cash for the Kims. He sold oil and minerals past US sanctions and says it brought in $50 to $100 million a year. Most money like that, he says, goes to Kim, for missiles and luxury goods. Ri's share came in 2002, under Kim's father: the title Hero of Labor, the car, the TV and a watch. Most North Koreans could never dream of that. But under Kim Jong Un, being a hero kept no one safe. In 2013 Kim had his own uncle executed, and the killing spread. Ri says he saw officials he knew killed with anti-aircraft guns. "It was not just high-level officers," he says, "but their families, their children." That ended the loyalty. "My patriotism turned into hatred," he said. In October 2014 he took his family and ran. CNN took his story to North Korea's people at the UN. They said he was lying to make money. Then the reporter asked if their agents might come after Ri. The official laughed. "No, he's garbage." They took his millions for decades. They only called him garbage when he stopped making them. So is Ri a hero for exposing Kim's money, or did he fill that fund for decades and only care when his own family was in danger?

Vanilla Ice got caught copying Queen and David Bowie. Now he says he owns their song, and that he paid $4 million for it. In the video below, he goes from "it's not the same" in 1990 to "they're both mine" years later. In 1990 "Ice Ice Baby" became the first rap song to hit No. 1 in America. Its famous bassline came from Queen and David Bowie's 1981 hit "Under Pressure." He never asked them, and the credits named only him and his DJ. On MTV he said the bassline was different. It goes "ding ding ding," he explained, and his has "that little bitty change." "It's not the same." Nobody bought it. The case was settled, and Queen and Bowie went on the song as writers. That should have been the end of it. But in 2017 he told a radio show he went to Brian May, Queen's guitarist, and bought "Under Pressure" itself. "It was cheaper than the lawsuit." "Under Pressure, Ice Ice Baby, same difference," he said. "They're both mine." Queen's side called that inaccurate. "An arrangement was made whereby the publishing in the song was shared," a spokesman said. Six years later he told VladTV the price: $4 million. Freddie Mercury and David Bowie had died, he said. Bowie lived until 2016. The man who swore he never took their song now says he owns it. Either way, that "little bitty change" still pays Queen and Bowie every time "Ice Ice Baby" plays. So who do you believe: the rapper who says he bought "Under Pressure" for $4 million, or the band that says he only shares it?

Pablo Escobar's partner ran his own island in the Bahamas. After 33 years in prison, he was asked how much money he walked out with: "Zero." In the video below, he tells DJ Vlad what he owns today, down to his watch. His name is Carlos Lehder. In the late 1970s he and Escobar built the Medellín Cartel, and Lehder found what made it rich: an island. He took over Norman's Cay, stretched its runway to 3,300 feet and guarded it with Dobermans. Planes landed there full of cocaine bound for America. He reportedly kept one kilo out of every four. But money like that doesn't stay hidden. After raids in the Bahamas, his bank accounts were frozen. In 1987 police found him on a farm in Colombia. Escobar's own hitman later claimed Escobar gave him up. A US judge gave him life without parole plus 135 years. So he testified against Panama's dictator, Manuel Noriega, and his sentence dropped to 55 years. He served 33 of them, 16 as a prison cook. When he walked out in June 2020, at 70, he had never held a cell phone. "Did you have money when you got out of prison after 33 years?" "Zero." In prison he owned one thing, a Chinese watch. His clothes, his shoes, "everything was owned by the American government." Today he rents a house and lives off his book. Everyone remembers the cartel bosses who died young. Lehder is what happens to the one who lived. So is zero the fair ending for the man who flooded America with cocaine, or did 33 years in a cell already pay for all of it?

Dave Chappelle walked away from $50 million at the top of his fame. Fifteen years later, his show was on Netflix and he was getting $0 from it. So he went on camera and begged his own fans: "Boycott me. Boycott Chappelle's Show. Do not watch it unless they pay me." In the video below, he says he signed his first deal "the way that a 28-year-old expecting father that was broke signs a contract." He needed that deal. Then the show took off. Its first season became the best-selling TV show on DVD at the time, so in 2004 Comedy Central reportedly offered him $50 million for two more seasons. But in 2005, in the middle of season three, he flew to South Africa and never came back. Comedy Central didn't wait for him. In 2006 it aired the sketches he had left behind, with two of his cast members introducing them instead of him. His work kept making money, with his name on it. And the contract he signed at 28 meant none of it had to reach him. In 2020 the show went up on Netflix, the same company paying him for his new specials. He found out like everyone else. "I found out that these people were streaming my work, and they never had to ask me, or they never have to tell me." So he read his old contract again. "Perfectly legal 'cause I signed the contract. But is that right? I didn't think so either." So instead of suing, he turned to the only people the network needed, the viewers. Netflix pulled the show at his request, and HBO Max said it would too. Less than three months later, on stage in Austin, he told the crowd what they had done. "You made that show worthless because without your eyes it's nothing. And I got my name back, and I got my license back, and I got my show back, and they paid me millions of dollars." Then he said goodbye to the network that once offered him $50 million: "Comedy Central, it's been a pleasure doing business with you." So did his fans fix a deal a broke 28-year-old should never have had to sign, or did they help a rich man get paid twice for a contract he chose to walk out on?

"She was so freaking mean to me." Toni Braxton was talking about Oprah. Her records made $170 million, she got $1,972, and on live TV Oprah made it her fault. Watch the video below to see the moment a bankrupt superstar took the blame for money she never got. March 1998. Toni sits down on Oprah's couch in front of millions of people. Two months earlier she had filed for bankruptcy. Her net worth, she tells Oprah, is "negative." Two years before that, she was everywhere. "Un-Break My Heart" sat at No. 1 for 11 weeks. She had Grammys and a world tour that ran for almost a year. So where did the money go? She had trusted the people around her. Toni was a preacher's daughter from Maryland when two famous producers, L.A. Reid and Babyface, signed her to their new label in Atlanta. Her videos, her clothes and her tours were paid for up front, then taken back out of her sales. Other stars got help with tour costs. Toni got a loan. So when her royalty check finally came, it was for $1,972. By the time she walked into Oprah's studio, strangers had already gone through her house writing down the price of her piano, her cars, her shoes, even her Grammys. And she had come to the one woman she looked up to most. For years she had watched Oprah tell people to sign their own checks. Oprah started with the Gucci silverware. Then she asked: "Do you take responsibility for the situation that you're in right now?" "100%." Toni tried to explain. Her records had made $170 million, and she got a tiny piece of it. Oprah didn't move. You knew money was coming in, she said, and you spent more than that. "I was doing math, 1 plus 1 is 2, all day long, all across the world," Toni said. "And I was still coming up negative." At the end Oprah asked where she would live once they sold her home. "I can always stay with mom." The audience clapped. Toni smiled through all of it. Inside, she says, she was in shock. Years later she finally said it out loud. "I loved her so much. I admired her and looked up to her." In a few minutes on that couch, Oprah made her feel "this big." "That moment completely changed my career. It made people look down on me." And the money trouble never really ended. In 2010, sick with lupus, she went bankrupt again. So was Oprah just being honest with a woman who spent too much, or was she mean to the one person in that deal who got almost nothing?

26-year-old Anna Nicole Smith married an 89-year-old oil billionaire. He died 14 months later, and a judge awarded her about $450 million. She never got a dollar of it. And people still argue about why she married him. Some call it a love story. Others call it a bet on his money. Which one do you believe? Watch the video below to hear her talk about him, then decide for yourself. They met in 1991 in a Houston club where she was dancing. He was a rich man in his 80s. Three years later she was a Playboy Playmate of the Year and his wife. But a few months into the marriage, his son stepped in. Pierce Marshall said his sick father needed a guardian, and he cut off the $50,000 a month the old man paid her. Then her husband died. She came to his funeral in her wedding gown. Was that grief, or a woman making sure the world saw a widow? Either way, she went to war with Pierce. She said her husband had promised her half of everything, and in 2000 a judge agreed. He ruled she was owed about $450 million. A woman in love doesn't usually ask a court for that much. A woman chasing money doesn't usually spend the rest of her life fighting for it. And the money kept slipping away. A Houston jury said she had no right to half. A federal judge threw out her award. Another gave her $88 million, and an appeals court took it back. So in 2006 she walked into the U.S. Supreme Court in black and said nothing. Two months later the court ruled 9-0 that she could keep fighting. It was the closest she ever came to winning. That September she gave birth to a daughter. Three days later her 20-year-old son died in her hospital room. In February she was dead at 39. Pierce died the same year. Neither of them saw the end. In 2011 the Supreme Court took the case again. She had been gone for four years, and the court wiped out the award. So which was it: a widow robbed of a promise, or a bet on his money that lost?

Johnny Sins was paid $100 for his first scene. Years later, Pornhub wanted $3.4 million to send him to space. He would have done the first one for free. The second one was supposed to make history. Watch the video below to hear how a $100 paycheck became a career. That $100 came after a job he hated. He finished college, went into construction and worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. After a year he quit and moved to Los Angeles. So he started answering ads on Craigslist. The small directors would hire a woman and didn't want to pay a man, so at first he worked for free. Then came the first paycheck. "I would do it for free," he says, "so I'll take $100." But the number kept climbing. $400. Then $100 more every three months, until his contract ended at $800 a scene. By then, he says, he was making more in a day than a doctor or a lawyer, just for showing up on set for three hours. So when Pornhub looked for a face to take to space, it picked the man who had gone from $100 to $800 a scene. In June 2015 it opened a 60-day campaign asking fans for $3.4 million. Johnny Sins and Eva Lovia would play astronauts on a real flight, shot by a studio called Digital Playground, with a release hoped for late 2016. But the money crawled. After the first day, about $5,000 had come in. When the 60 days ended, the total stood at $236,086. Years later, Johnny Sins told the Impaulsive podcast: "Obviously we're not in space." He said that for Pornhub it was "really just a marketing campaign." So was the space film only a stunt, as he says, or did the fans simply refuse to pay $3.4 million to send him there?

Jim Carrey got $7 million for Dumb and Dumber. Jeff Daniels got $50,000 to get his tongue stuck to a pole. His own team said it would ruin his career. He had one week to prove them wrong. Watch the video below to hear what Daniels told them. It was 1994. Jim Carrey had just become a star with Ace Ventura. Jeff Daniels was known for serious acting, and he says he was stuck there. He wanted to be in a comedy. So he went to LA and tried for jobs. Dumb and Dumber was one of them. He tried out for the part, then came back to read with Jim. The directors, the Farrelly brothers, wanted him. The studio wanted a comedian. The pay showed it. Carrey was getting $7 million. Daniels was offered $50,000, and the studio reportedly hoped he would say no. But the studio was not the only one who wanted him to say no. The night before he flew to LA, his own team made one last try. "We're gonna stop this. This is not who you are. You're a serious actor, and this will ruin your career. And I hate to tell you, Jeff, but he's gonna act you off the screen." They were sure Carrey would make him look bad. Daniels' answer: "Thanks for the support." Then he counted for them. Carrey isn't in the snowball in the head scene, the tongue on the pole, or the toilet scene. "Those are all mine," he told them. "Unless they cut those out of the movie, I'm gonna score." So he flew out anyway. The studio still wasn't sure about him, so it gave him the first week of shooting to prove it. They filmed those scenes first, put them together and watched. They liked what they saw. He got to stay. So were his agents right to try to stop a serious actor from taking $50,000 to play a man who gets his tongue stuck to a pole, or did he see something his whole team missed?

Paul Hogan got the whole world to visit Australia. In 2010, Australia wouldn't let him leave. It all traced back to one movie. Crocodile Dundee made about $328 million, and years later Australia's tax office sent Hogan a bill for more than $150 million. Watch the video below to hear Hogan answer the tax office in his own words. To see how it got that far, go back to 1984 and a TV ad. Hogan told American viewers, "I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you," and invited them to come and say g'day. Two years later Crocodile Dundee cost $8.8 million to make and earned about $328 million. Tourism Australia later said it put the country on the map for Americans. That success is exactly what the tax office came back to. It said the income from those years, around his first big hit, was never properly taxed. The case was part of a wider investigation into offshore tax havens. Hogan always denied it. The fight had been going on for years when, in 2010, he flew home for his mother's funeral. There the tax office served him with a departure prohibition order. He could not go back to his wife and young son in Los Angeles until the dispute was settled. To Hogan, that felt like an insult. His lawyer said he was stunned that anyone would treat him as a flight risk. Hogan called himself a scapegoat. He said that if he really were a tax cheat, "I must be the dumbest one in the world." In the end his lawyers made a deal, and he was allowed to fly out. Two years later he and his producer settled the whole dispute, reported at more than $150 million, on terms nobody made public. No charges were ever laid. But it stuck to him anyway. In 2019 he said, "I wasn't charged but I've still got it attached to me." So the man who got the whole world to visit Australia still lives in Los Angeles. He says he would have come home years ago if his son had come with him. Looking back, did the tax office simply collect what a hit movie owed, or did it make an example of the most famous face Australia ever had?

Gwyneth Paltrow was sued for $3.1 million over a ski crash. She asked the jury for $1. She got it. That dollar was her whole prize. She never got a cent of her legal fees back. Watch the video below to see why a woman worth millions spent eight days in court fighting for one dollar. It started in 2016 at Deer Valley, a ski resort in Utah. Paltrow was out with her kids on a beginner slope when she and another skier crashed. That skier was Terry Sanderson, a retired eye doctor. He said she skied into his back and left him with four broken ribs and a brain injury. In 2019 he sued her for $3.1 million, and later cut it to $300,000. But Paltrow told the story the other way around. She said he hit her from behind. So instead of paying him to go away, she sued him back. For one dollar, plus her lawyers' bills. In March 2023 the trial went live on TV, and half the internet tuned in. Then his lawyer asked her what the crash had cost her. "Well, we lost half a day of skiing." That line became a meme overnight. The same lawyer even asked if her $1 idea came from Taylor Swift, who had won $1 in her own court case in 2017. Paltrow said she didn't know about it. After eight days, the jury needed less than three hours. Sanderson was 100% at fault. Paltrow got her dollar. A month later, both sides agreed to drop the question of her legal fees, and he agreed not to appeal. On her way out, she stopped at his chair, touched his shoulder and whispered: "I wish you well." "Thank you, dear," he said. Outside, reporters asked the 76-year-old if the lawsuit had been worth it. "No." He said he would be on the internet forever. So did Gwyneth Paltrow fight eight days for one dollar to clear her name, or to show a 76-year-old man what it costs to sue her?

Beyoncé's dad says Farrah Franklin walked away from $50 million in Destiny's Child because he "got loud" with her. She says she was sick. He still laughs about it on camera. Watch the video below to see how a sick 19-year-old became a $50 million joke. In early 2000, Farrah was 18, a singer from Des Moines, Iowa, when Mathew Knowles, Beyoncé's dad and the group's manager, picked her to join Destiny's Child. Another new girl joined with her that same day: Michelle Williams. Within weeks, both of them were in the "Say My Name" video. The song went to No. 1 and later won two Grammys. In a few months, Farrah had gone from Iowa to the top of the charts. But the top came with a schedule that never stopped. That July, the group had a flight from Los Angeles to Australia, and Farrah never got on it. She says she was sick with dehydration and the stomach flu. "I have not been to sleep in 26 hours," she told MTV. When she couldn't show up, she says, management went after her, so she walked out of the room and quit. Mathew and Beyoncé told it differently. To them, she had missed three big promo dates and didn't seem to want it anymore. Either way, on July 20, 2000, Destiny's Child went on without her and became the biggest girl group in the world. Nineteen years later, Mathew heard her side of the story in an interview. He wasn't angry. He laughed. "Somebody left a group, left 50 million dollars on the table because Mathew Knowles got loud with them." And Michelle, the girl who joined with her? She stayed. On Friday, she was dancing next to Beyoncé and Kelly at Jay-Z's show. Farrah's spot next to them has been empty for 26 years. So was Farrah a sick teenager pushed out of the biggest girl group in the world, or a girl who threw away $50 million over one raised voice?

Nobody hires Einstein to answer support emails. That's the scary part of what Ramp's CEO is saying. For a lot of jobs, AI may already be smart enough. Making it smarter doesn't make companies buy more of it. So this summer AI got cheaper, businesses used more of it, and the total bill didn't move. Watch the clip to see where the money went instead. He says the winners may be the apps that buy AI and sell results. Ramp is one of them: over $2 billion a year, and still more than doubling. So when AI is smart enough, who gets the money: the labs that build it, or the apps that use it?

Jay-Z's best friend built his label, ran his business and signed Kanye West. Jay's thank-you: "I can't be known as a businessman with you next to me." Jay is now worth $2.5 billion. His friend's share of that label sold for $1 million. Watch the video below to hear Dame Dash tell how his best friend left him behind. In the 90s every label turned Jay-Z down. So his friend Dame, a party promoter from Harlem, said they would build their own. In 1995 they started Roc-A-Fella. Jay rapped. Dame did the rest: the deals, the clothes, the movies, the new artists. Then in 2004 Def Jam made Jay its president. Dame says there was no place for him, and Jay told him why to his face, with that one sentence. "I don't even want to be next to you," Dame answered. Jay kept climbing. Dame kept fighting: lawsuits, debts, unpaid taxes. In 2024 a judge put his share of Roc-A-Fella up for auction, and New York State took it for $1 million. Every dollar went to what he owed. Dame sums it up in one line: "It was more friendship for me and money for him." So did Jay-Z betray the friend who built him a label, or did he just outgrow him?

In 1988 Merv Griffin beat Donald Trump in a fight for a $365 million casino company. A year later it was bankrupt. And the one who saved his fortune was a little boy who couldn't fall asleep. Watch the video below to hear how much money Griffin thought he had, just months before that casino fell apart. Back then he was one of the richest men on TV. He owned the two most popular game shows in America, and in 1986 he sold his company, shows and all, for $250 million in cash. So he went looking for something bigger. Resorts International owned a big casino in Atlantic City, and Donald Trump already controlled it. Griffin offered more money, they sued each other, and in the end they made a deal. Griffin got the company. Trump got the Taj Mahal, the giant casino it was building. But Griffin paid for most of it with borrowed money. The debt was too heavy, and a year later the company filed for bankruptcy. What kept him rich had started long before, at home, with his son Tony. In the early 1960s Tony was a little boy who couldn't fall asleep. His dad sat down at the piano and made up a short, soft tune for him. A few years later Griffin needed music for a new quiz show. In the final round, players get 30 seconds to write their answer, and something had to play while the clock ran. He remembered Tony's tune. It was only 14 seconds long, so he played it a second time in a new key and added a little ending. Now it was exactly 30 seconds. That show was Jeopardy! And every time those 30 seconds played, the man who wrote them got paid. When the casino fell, the clock music kept going, five nights a week. By 2005 Griffin said that one little song had earned him between $70 million and $80 million. He died in 2007. Jeopardy! is still on TV, and Tony's 30 seconds still play at the end of every show. So what really made Merv Griffin rich: the big deals he loved to make, or the song he wrote for a boy who couldn't sleep?

Kevin Spacey made millions playing the most powerful man in Washington. That same show is the reason he has $0 today. He never lost a single trial, and it still took his house in the city where they filmed it. Watch the video below to see how a man who kept winning still lost everything. It started in 2017. Spacey was the face of House of Cards, Netflix's biggest show. He played Frank Underwood, a man who would do anything for power. Then the accusations came. Netflix cut him the same year. The writers killed off Frank, and the last season shrank from 13 episodes to 8. So the show's makers went after him for what that cost them. An arbitrator, a private judge his contract called for, ruled that he broke the show's rules on sexual harassment with the crew. The bill came to about $31 million. But in real courtrooms, his story went the other way. In 2022 a New York jury found him not liable. In 2023 a London jury found him not guilty on all nine charges. Both times, he won. The $31 million stayed. And winning wasn't free. By 2024 he had a pile of legal bills he couldn't pay. That's when Morgan asked him straight how much money he had. "None." His voice breaks when he talks about his house in Baltimore, where he had lived since House of Cards started filming there. The bank was taking it, and he didn't know where he would live next. Morgan asks what he is going to do now. "Get back on the horse." Six weeks later, two men fought over that house at auction. Spacey had paid $5.65 million for it. It went for $3.24 million. Last year he told a newspaper he lives in hotels and Airbnbs. "I literally have no home." When the headlines called him homeless, he said they twisted his words. He just goes where the work is. So should a man two juries cleared still owe $31 million, or did the makers of House of Cards have every right to make him pay?

Jordan Belfort finally revealed what "Sell me this pen" actually tests, and most salespeople fail it in one sentence. The second they hear the line, they start pitching. The pen is great, it writes upside down, it's the best value for your money. To Belfort, that's the clearest sign someone doesn't get selling. The right answer doesn't mention the pen at all, at least not at first. A guy in the audience asks Belfort to sell him the pen. He jokes that nobody has ever asked him that before, then explains what the test is really about: before you pitch anything, you ask questions. How long have you been in the market for a pen? What have you used before? Is it for business or personal? How much do you usually spend? Pitching without asking, Belfort says, tells the buyer you don't give a shit about them. You're just shoving the product down their throat. The questions also show Belfort who to walk away from. If someone says they're not looking for a pen, he says "Great, have a nice day" and moves on. For him, the biggest rookie mistake is trying to sell to everyone. Only then does Belfort pitch: "Based on what you said to me, this pen is perfect. Let me tell you why." And the pen, he says, is just a stand-in for any product. Rookies sell the pen. Pros sell what you just told them. Be honest: would you have pitched the pen, or asked the first question?

Cher was the voice of every Sonny & Cher hit. Her name was on the company. At 78 she finally said it: "He took all my money." She was 16 when she met Sonny. He was 27, and he became her whole world. Her partner on stage, the man who made their records, and later her husband. So when he put papers in front of her, she didn't ask questions. Often it was right before a show, with the crowd already waiting. She signed, walked out and sang. She trusted him. It took another man to show her what she had signed. Years later she started dating David Geffen, a record label boss who read contracts for a living. Geffen read hers and told her the truth. All her money went to a company called Cher Enterprises. Sonny owned 95% of it. His lawyer owned 5%. Cher owned 0%. Her name was on the company, but the money was never hers. She couldn't even write a check unless Sonny or his lawyer signed it. So she went to the man she had trusted since she was 16 and asked him one question. Why? "I always knew you'd leave me," he said. "That's not a reason," she told him. He had no answer. Somehow, she didn't hate him. They stayed friends. When Sonny died in 1998, she stood up at his funeral and spoke about him. But she never got her answer. Decades later she still says she wishes she could ask him just one thing. When did he decide it was OK to take her money?